I notice the new RTS (based on the men of war 2 series I think) gates of hell is using smoke and dust cloud effects to seemingly obscure or give away units as the physics engine naturally generates them according to how they affect the environment and how large the explosion is, type of terrain etc.

I am thinking that Steel Division 2 would benefit greatly due to the large distances you are often zoomed out from good dust effects showing up enemy units AFTER they have fired and disappeared. Or even just seeing smoke and dust drift across the field after an artillery bombardment. So if you missed it the first time you would certainly see it due to the smoke lingering.

Some ww2 AT weapons were notorious for kicking up so much dust that the commander had to stand outside and direct fire iirc?

I mean sounds in general for weapons need to be much more distinct as well. The sounds seem very generic for all weapons. It would be nice to have individual sounds for each unique weapon and even the different way they sound from each platform.Use close combat 1 as your bench mark I would say... but do 100 times better as it's from 1990 or something.If not at least make them very easy to mod along with unit cards this time around.

It would certainly be neat if there were some distinct effects for different guns, like guns with muzzle brakes such as the Firefly would kick out dust to the left and right and 88mm guns would send out a large plume of dirt that would then dissipate relatively quickly. It would be an interesting detail that would help with presentation and be more noticeable from the elevated zoom than most other small-scale aspects of the game. I wouldn't expect any kind of dynamic dirt system but giving the different cannons a little individual character wouldn't be a bad thing, and that goes for the sound design as well.

Yeah. Remember in the old close combat that you could spot mortars by running around the map. Even where you had no visibility and homing in on the reload and fire sound. The doppler. It got louder as you got closer. Then. BAM counter battery. A bit of a cheat but it reminded me of how good the sounds were in those old games.